Festo go to Scarborough Fair

23/10/13

Whilst many bemoan the shortage of skills and poor image of UK engineering a group of Companies in Scarborough have taken the bull by the horns and launched their own Engineering week to promote our industry to children of all ages. Festo were proud to help support them.

Described by its residents as forty miles off the coast of England Scarborough may not be the first location that comes to mind when thinking of Engineering expertise in the UK. However, the breadth and depth of engineering companies exhibiting at the 2013 Scarborough Engineering week served to highlight how passionate about Engineering the area is.

Festo were proud to be sponsoring the event once again and with attendee’s exceeding 2500 over three days this years event proved a real hit.

Aimed at promoting STEM subjects to school children and students the show combined colleges and industry to help encourage the next generation of engineers forward.

Festo ran a "back to the future“ theme allowing students to generate compressed air and drive actuators, interact with industrial applications like pick and place and loading and sorting via our FMS stations and then get really carried away by taking over control of the Bionic Handling assistant – Brian Heslop, one of our Festo Business Consultants, still has the scars!! Extremely encouraging were the number of students returning in the evening to see the parts they missed in the day and to have another go on the Festo stand!

It is especially important to be changing the image of engineering with the parents as well as the children as these will be the sponsors and supporters during the students period of career selection.

To reflect the importance of this event to the local area and the UK awareness of the value of manufacturing the show was visited by HRH the Duke of Gloucester who spent a good time taking in the exhibits. Whilst his attention was obviously drawn by the Bionic Handling unit he was equally keen to understand how the students interacted with the industrial applications shown on the FMS stations and simple training rigs they may be directly involved with.

Above all the event provided a huge amount of fun and entertainment for both attendee’s and exhibitors alike and many went away reviewing their career options.Maybe future applicants across UK engineering can quote their inspiration for the industry as having been sparked by events just like these. For Scarborough it will be the measure of a job well done and ensure their local manufacturing base remains as diverse and strong as it is today.